ROSC Nollaig 1972

Wales and the Welsh

le Pól Ó Duibhir
Wales and the Welsh le Trevor Fishlock, Cassell, pp 196, £2.75.

"Long gone are the days when the Encyclopaedia Britannica could print, with arrogant and im­perial cheek: For Wales, see Eng­land."

This book will go a long way to ensuring that Wales continues to get a separate entry. It is a percep­tive, sympathetic and often humor­ous panorama of modern Wales. It covers the language issue, the national eisteddfod, the origins and development of the nationalist party, and the salient points of the economic background. It debunks the myth of the Free Wales Army and documents the dying custom of Welsh nicknames with delicate humour. A vast array of relevant facts are presented in a coherent and easily readable form.

While the author does not openly take a stand, presenting both sides of every issue fairly, his documen­tation of the rationale and activi­ties of the Welsh Language Society shows an understanding which can only spring from considerable sym­pathy for the Society's aims. His chapter on the National Eistedd­fod could be read with consider­able profit by the Jilly Coopers and Atticusses of the Sunday Times, whose understanding of this great cultural catharsis is limited to the more obvious tourist side-shows.

Trevor Fishlock has certainly been influenced by his three years in Wales. What other reporter for so prestigious an English language daily as THE Times could get away with such Welshified English syntax as: "Pleasant indeed must have been the teacher who, by well-meant ridicule and torture, rid pupils of Welshness and left-handedness." Shades of Richard Llewellyn.

Although this is a book which may annoy Welsh people for its presentation of their foibles, in what to them must sometimes seem a bit too stage-Welsh, it is essential reading for any outsider who wants to gen up on the scene.

The only drawback to the book is its price. Can we hope for an early paperback edition?